JAN. 29–FEB. 4
MOVIES
C O U R T E S Y O N E F I N E D AY F I L M S
perhaps, a movie that is easier to think about than to watch: It’s overlong, and prone to greeting-card proverbs. But its central thought is one that will only grow more significant as the world becomes a bigger, more alienating place: Is any feeling real, or are we just programmed that way? R. MATTHEW SINGER. Bagdad, Cedar Hills, Cornelius, Living Room Theaters, Movies on TV.
The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug
CASCADE FESTIVAL OF AFRICAN FILMS: NAIROBI HALF LIFE
Frozen
B Widely hailed as a return to the classic animated features of yore, Frozen arrives as an uncomplicated triumph of traditionalism, for better or worse. A musical-theater retelling of classic Hans Christian Andersen tale The Snow Queen, hidebound Disney preservationists were worried the decidedly modern title foretold the goofy revisionism of 2010’s Rapunzel fan-fic Tangled. But there’s a far easier explanation for the name change: Once again, it’s all about the princesses. Compared to the pandering messiness of most kids’ movies, there’s plenty to excite the family-friendly faithful. Widescreen 3-D visuals sculpt an endlessly inventive setting of ice palaces and snowcapped peaks, the original songs soar and tickle as needed, and snowman sidekick Olaf giddily beats back the encroaching melodrama. PG. JAY HORTON. Cedar Hills, Eastport, Clackamas, Forest, Indoor Twin, Hilltop, Movies on TV, Sandy.
an artificially hyperintelligent operating system that’s half personal secretary, half therapist. It speaks in a naturalistic feminine rasp. It seems to be thinking. It seems to know you. You fall in love with her. She falls in love with you. Then she develops the capacity for jealousy. Eventually, you’re arguing about sex. She starts saying things like, “I’m becoming much more than they programmed.” Twenty years ago, this scenario would’ve played as a dystopian nightmare. But in the era of Catfish, where “dating” is an increasingly abstract concept, the premise of Spike Jonze’s Her can serve as the basis for an honest-to-goodness relationship drama. Her is,
The Hunger Games: Catching Fire
B Taking what initially seemed
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REVIEW NOAH RABINOWITZ
adds Kristen Wiig as high-spirited love interest and expands the animated repertoire to encompass 3-D thrills, but the story itself, which shoehorns Gru into the service of a global super-spy league for the flimsiest of reasons, arrives packed with exposition and shorn of coherency. PG. JAY HORTON. Academy.
B+ When last we saw Bilbo Baggins (Martin Freeman) and his band of dwarves, they were headed to confront a dragon. But along the way, they also took an awful lot of time to do the dishes and sing songs seemingly stolen from Led Zeppelin. That was a central complaint about Peter Jackson’s first entry in his Hobbit trilogy, and it made fans wonder whether swelling J.R.R. Tolkien’s shortest book into three films would result in stagnation. That fear goes flying out the window like a decapitated orc head in The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug, which justifies its nearly three-hour runtime not by cramming in tons of story, but by allowing the action pieces to play out with the lunacy of an ultraviolent Looney Tunes short. PG-13. AP KRYZA. Cedar Hills, Eastport, Clackamas, Movies on TV.
Gravity
A- With Gravity, Alfonso Cuarón
and his screenwriter son, Jonas, take on the most primal fear possible, that of being lost in an abyss of nothingness. The film features only two actors, Sandra Bullock and George Clooney. Their simple space-station repair mission turns into a nightmare as debris from a destroyed satellite tears their shuttle to shreds and they’re left hopelessly adrift with a dwindling supply of oxygen. It is perhaps the most stressful experience to be had in a movie theater this year, and as such it’s nearly perfect. PG-13. AP KRYZA. Cedar Hills, Eastport, Clackamas, Cornelius, Movies on TV.
The Great Beauty
A The Great Beauty begins with a
cannonball, followed closely by a heart attack, and concludes with a 104-year-old toothless nun crawling on her knees up the steps of a church. Paolo Sorrentino’s luxuriously sprawling film is both enchanted and repulsed by the decadence it depicts, a tension that makes for one of the richest cinematic experiences of the year. At the center is Jep Gambardella (a wondrous Toni Servillo), a 65-year-old hedonist who wrote an acclaimed novel as a young man and now spends his days (and nights) living large in Rome. The loosely connected vignettes can meander, but taken together they compose a fascinating portrait of Berlusconi’s Italy, one that is too consumed by orgiastic terrace parties and neverending conga lines to realize how stagnant it’s become. REBECCA JACOBSON. Living Room Theaters.
Her
B+ And so there’s this computer. It’s
REV IT UP: Documentary filmmaker Lotfy Nathan apparently began creating 12 O’Clock Boys with one question in mind: Who are these gangs of kids barreling around Baltimore on dirt bikes? His film answers that question but leaves the audience with many more. The “12 o’clock boys” in question are pretty much what they seem—a loosely organized group of young men who share a love of high speeds, nail-biting stunts and evading the local cops. The short documentary follows 12-year-old Pug, a small kid with a big, cheeky mouth who dreams of riding with the “flock.” Pug’s mother, naturally, would prefer he didn’t, but the hyperactive tween will not be deterred, and over the course of three summers, we watch him grow from a fairly sweet kid to a foulmouthed punk and fully fledged 12 o’clock boy. It’s unclear how we should feel about this. The film briefly notes that some riders have been killed or seriously injured and are a danger to pedestrians and drivers. But, as an older member points out, in comparison to the kids in these impoverished neighborhoods who are joining gangs or dealing drugs, dirt-bike riding is a relatively positive activity. With so many advocacy documentaries on screens of late, Nathan’s unwillingness to take a side is refreshing—most of the film features Pug fooling around or pontificating about his life, interspersed with slow-mo footage of the bikers zooming about town. But the lack of other perspectives or statistics means we spend an awful lot of time watching bikers pull the same handful of tricks over and over again. Nathan clearly hasn’t made up his mind whether the 12 o’clock boys are ruthless menaces or misunderstood thrill-seekers. But he doesn’t give us enough information to make up ours, either. RUTH BROWN. B SEE IT: 12 O’Clock Boys opens Friday at the Clinton Street Theater. It also plays at 3 pm Saturday, Feb. 1, at the Hollywood Theatre.
Willamette Week JANUARY 29, 2014 wweek.com
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